Ask Aunt Foley: Some Facts About DS That Will Make You More Pissed Off

          Dear Aunt Foley:   Why did DS have to close?  It was our home and we miss it terribly.  Signed, Everybody

          Dear Everybody:  Despite the battles I had with Doggyspace in 2010 I still loved the site.  I met all my friends there and it helped me become the “kind of a big deal” I am now.  It gave me more than I gave it, and you can’t speak ill about a site, or a person, that does that.

          But DS was run by humans and too many humans are run by money.  We were told that is took money to run Doggyspace and to make money you need advertisers.   Advertisers want to see lots of clicks on a site.  Because DS never improved their site, many pups had trouble getting on the site, and others found different platforms to post on DS was not getting the needed clicks and the site stopped generating money.  When greedy humans don’t make money they kill the thing that isn’t earning for them the same way that a hunter will put down a coonhound that won’t hunt.

          Now here is an interesting website http://doggyspace.com.smoothstat.com/.  This website shows that it cost the owners $0.00 a days to run Doggyspace.  It also shows that the site made $0.00 last year.  So nothing was going in and nothing was coming out.  Most of all it showed that DS went from 5,000 clicks from different users in January of 2014 to 500 clicks from different users in December of 2014.  No advertisers will pay for 500 clicks a month but on the other hand it doesn’t take many servers to pay for 500 clicks a month.  The bottom line is in today’s business world break even isn’t good enough.  If it doesn’t make money is it taken out back and shot.

          I am not an expert on websites but you do need someone with servers to handle all traffic.  The Tanner Brigade has a little over a hundred members but the fee we pay to Ning to run the servers and provide support is $300.00 a year and we can have up to 100,000 (and no advertisers.)  So the most it could have cost Pet360 to run Doggyspace a year, with no advertisers, was $300.00.  Many parents, including Blazer’s Mom offered to buy it for us.  They never received an answer.

          Petsmart bought Pet360 in August 2014 for $130 million dollars.  This increased Petsmarts’ profits to 98 million dollars.  But neither Pet360, Petsmart (now one and the same) could afford $300.00 to keep Doggyspace alive because their profits would on be $97.000,700 and who can live off of that?

          So Doggyspace was not killed off because of money but because of indifference by a major pet company who doesn’t care about its customers.

          So remember, all that matters to these businesses is money

          And remember this when you go to buy your kibble or a squeaky toy.  If one person stops buying one $30.00 bag of kibble a month the company will lose more money than it would have lost keeping DS alive.

          And if every one of the 500 people who clicked on Doggyspace in December do this it will be a lot more money.  And if the 5,000 members who clicked last January do it, that’s enough money for someone to pop their head out of the 98 million dollars and notice.

          The name Doggyspace.com can be bought in January 2016 for anyone interested.  Right now Doggyspace.net is available. 

          Maybe someday Doggyspace.com will rise again, and this time in the hands of a company who cares about pets and their parents.

          Until then we can dream.

          And mourn.